A petite, busty woman sat upon a large gray couch nervously fidgeting around. She was an of an older persuasion to the typical sort of person who auditioned on the website, the crow’s feet near her eyes proof positive of many happy years on earth. She was wearing a plaid pair of pajamas and her brunette hair was tied up in a variety of pink rollers. “Is it on, Henry?” she asked in a thick Minnesotan accent.
A gruff voice in an equally thick accent responded, “I think so, Dear.” The camera jostled slightly, “I mean, the red light’s on.”
“Yah, but it was also on during Mason’s tenth birthday, and yet when we went to burn the tape, Poof!” she gestured with her hands, “Gone just like Liam’s toupée during that thunderstorm.”
“Ma!” a different male voice laughed, his accent slightly less pronounced, “This is a digital camera. How many time’s I’ve got to tell ya everything gets streamed to the Cloud now.”
“Oh hush you,” the woman waved her hand, grinning at the unseen voice, “Can you please check if it’s working for your father?”
The camera jostled slightly once more, “Yep. It says it’s streaming.”
“Uff da,” the woman sat up straighter, “Well now, why’s it doing something silly like that? Did you press the right button Henry.”
The gruff voice mumbled, “Why’d they put so many buttons on these new fangled things?”
“Ma, do you want me stop recording?” the lighter male voice asked, the gruff voice fading off as evidently the man known as Henry went to go to do something else.
“No, sweetie, that’s alright. Can you can edit it from the cloud?” the woman was peeling herself off the couch, her figure even more pronounced as she stood up. For someone so short, it was rather impressive how well she managed to carry her absolutely stacked figure.
“You-betcha,” The younger male voice responded.
“Great. Now be a sweetheart and help your Ma decompress,” she held out her hands expectantly flexing her fingers.
From the side of the camera, an absolute behemoth of a man walked in. Well, it seemed that way in comparison to his apparent mother, as he was easily twice her size despite being almost just as wide. He easily looked like he probably played football, hockey, or potentially even both.
Making sure to pay attention so that he didn’t accidentally hurt his mother, the man lightly stepped down on her feet, grabbing her arms and pulling upwards. As he lifted up, his mother slowly began to grow taller, her features gradually growing in proportion, and her pronounced hourglass figure slowly became less pronounced.
When his mom was about a head shorter than him, he stopped pulling, politely stepping off her feet. The woman hugged him, him reciprocating with a massive bear hug. As they broke the hug, she stood on her tip toes (and he politely bended down) and kissed him on the forehead, “Thank you so much, darling.”
“No problem, Ma.” The large man blushed slightly, but spoke with a familiarity that seemed to suggest this wasn’t that uncommon an occurrence. “Do ya want me to stick around and help you out with your video?”
“Oh no, dear,” the woman shook her head, “I can’t ask you to do that. You’ve got to go finish packing up.”
“Ma, I don’t leave for college for another week.”
“Yah, but you still need to sort through all your stuff. Now go upstairs and finish packing, please.”
“Alright Ma,” the large man rolled his eyes, walking off screen once again, “but if you need any help, make sure to holler.”
“Oh, it can’t be that hard dear. After all, your father managed to figure out how to turn it on,” The two laughed, and as the man’s voice faded away upstairs, the woman was alone once again.
“Okay. Now to finish getting ready,” the woman spoke to herself. She looked around the room, until she evidently spotted what she was looking for: a large brown blanket that had been laying on the couch. In a single motion, she whipped the blanket out, before circling it around her body once and dropping it to the floor.
What had previously been plaid pajamas quickly transformed into a golden leotard. She also had on bright white sneakers, with big bushy white socks and two pink sweatbands around her wrists with slightly less pink ribbon designs on them. While her hair had previously been tied up in rollers, they had been set free, allowing for her brown, voluminous hair to spread out. She briefly went through a small routine of stretches with ease, only further invoking the almost 80’s workout instructor ensemble her outfit seemed to be going for. Even though she had not physically de-aged, it seemed that simply being in this outfit had brought about a youthful energy to her.
With her stretching complete, she clapped her hands. “Note to self: Start the video here.”
She took a deep breath, and smiled as she addressed the camera, “Hi there dearies, my name’s Olivia, but most people round these parts call me Olive, and I’d love the opportunity to perform again on ANGA.”
“You see, back in the day I used to be a magician’s assistant with an old pal of mine.” She took a gossipy tone as she continued, “His name was Caleb, and he was a real swell guy. Occasionally would take him too long to restore me after the show, but he’d always make up for it later.” She returned back to her more conversational tone, “Anywhos, one day after the show I got to drinking with Henry, and next thing I know I'm married to the guy and I’m pregnant with my lovely daughter, Hannah.”
“Caleb and I parted ways shortly after, because I wanted to take care of Hannah and he wanted to start a new routine with his girlfriend. Things are still going pretty well for them too, Grace and I usually go out for mani-pedis every two weeks.”
“Anyways, thirty odd years and two kids later, my little Mason’s finally leaving the nest,” Olive seemed genuinely about to tear up, “He’s going to ‘Ole Miss on a - on a Football Scholarship, and I know he’s going to do absolutely amazing.” She took a little bit of time to compose herself before continuing, wiping away at the edges of her eyes. “And since he’s leaving, I thought it might be a good time to maybe step back into the assistant game.”
“I know that the landscape has been probably shifted quite a bit from back in my day, but Henry’s getting up there in years now and I don’t want him to be worrying later on down the line about money. I keep telling him that he should probably consider getting a de-aging treatment if he’s so concerned, but that man’s as stubborn as a mule. Hardly ever uses his magic reserves for anything other than grabbing the remote from the coffee table,” Olive laughed.
“But let me tell you, if I get on the show, I certainly won’t go easy on the other contestants. I used to be known as ‘The Queen of Compression’ back in the day. Well, it was mostly Henry that used to call me that, but I still think I can do a pretty good flattening.”
Olive held her arm out to demonstrate. After a moment’s of focus, her arm slowly began to retract towards her shoulder, the skin wrinkling and flattening in a pattern similar to a metal beam under a hydraulic press. Olive waved from the hand that was now essentially flush with her shoulder, the former folds of her arm still visibly present.
“And then,” with her other normal arm, Olive reached up dramatically to her mouth, producing a *pop* sound effect. Her hand shot outwards, the flattened arm rapidly inflating back to normal.
Olive laughed, “See! I think I’ve still got what it takes!” She smiled, “So how about it? Why not let this old dog try to learn some new tricks?”
Olive stood there a few seconds longer, before relaxing. “Alright. I think that was probably good enough.” She walked over to the camera, jostling it from its stand once more. “Okay. Now to just figure out which of these sends it to the cloud…” Some beeps could be heard, as the camera began to zoom in and out, the focus shifting. The view lines and camera details that normally were not visible during a recording appeared. The words ‘Livestream Paused’ appeared briefly in the upper left corner, right before the video ended.